BoA meets Fed capital target December 5, 2010 BANK of America has paved the way to meet all regulatory requirements imposed on it when it agreed the repayment of the $45bn (£28.5bn) Tarp government bailout it received at the peak of the financial crisis. The bank was told it needed to raise an extra $3bn through asset sales by the end of the year. [...]
TNT to take big stake in demerged Express unit December 2, 2010 LOGISTICS firm TNT said yesterday that it will keep a 29.9 per cent stake in its Express unit once it is spun off from its Mail division in a bid to avoid raising funds, cheering investors who had feared a cash call. The move, details of which were announced in a capital markets day presentation [...]
FED’S $3 TRILLION IN EMERGENCY AID December 1, 2010 Ben Bernanke: Banks and firms used our temporary liquidity facilities 21,000 times during the crisis EUROPEAN banks were some of the biggest beneficiaries of the Federal Reserve’s $3.3 trillion emergency loan programmes during the darkest days of the financial crisis when the US central bank desperately tried to keep the global system functioning. The biggest [...]
Optimism for US recovery December 1, 2010 STEADY growth is being observed in the US, the central bank reported last night. In its latest beige book, the Federal Reserve said the economy “continued to improve, on balance” from early/mid-October to mid-November. Manufacturing activity continued to grow in “almost all” districts, reflecting optimistic results from yesterday’s ISM manufacturing index. The beige book found [...]
ECB purchase not enough December 1, 2010 THE European Central Bank (ECB) is expected to announce a resumption of its special government bond-purchasing programme today in a desperate bid to stop the spread of the sovereign debt crisis in its tracks. But the markets are likely to be disappointed by the scale of its intervention, with most analysts saying that the ECB [...]
Promising lift for industry helps US jobs December 1, 2010 INDUSTRIAL growth in the US still offers hope for an economic recovery, a survey released yesterday indicated. The ISM manufacturing index, which assesses the state of US industry, came in at 56.6 for November – displaying growth slightly above the rate expected by economists. There was a large dip in the rate of production growth, [...]
Two dangers to look out for in 2011 November 30, 2010 AS readers know, I am relatively sanguine about the outlook for the global and UK economies next year. But this doesn’t mean that I’m blind to the risks facing the recovery. Two in particular worry me. The first is the possibility of a break-up of the euro. Arturo de Frias at Evolution Securities has crunched [...]
Bernanke says US needs to hire more November 30, 2010 AMERICA faces severe problems if it cannot get more people back to work, the chairman of the Federal Reserve (Fed) argued in a speech last night. Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that “social and economic consequences” make it vital for the US to reduce its level of unemployment. In October unemployment was measured at 9.6 per [...]
US JOBS DATA COULD STILL DISAPPOINT November 29, 2010 CFD MARKET STRATEGIST, GFT LAST week was a stomach-churning rollercoaster for investors and traders alike. Attention shifted away from the US and the backlash which greeted the Fed’s announcement of QE2. Instead, the focus was on tensions between North and South Korea, along with the European sovereign debt and banking crisis. These issues have the [...]
Fed forecasts US slowdown November 23, 2010 PROSPECTS of an American recovery are less bright than previously thought, according to minutes of the most recent Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting, released last night. The Fed expects unemployment for next year of around 8.9–9.1 per cent, up from its last prediction of 8.3–8.7 per cent. Furthermore, its growth forecasts for 2011 fell to 3–3.6 [...]